The Global Economy
November 1997

November Article Abstracts

Title: Globalization: The Great American Non-Debate
Author: Alan Tonelson
"Precisely because its effects are distributed in such a wildly uneven, frequently shifting manner, globalization raises serious questions about America's future as a cohesive, successful society--about American nationhood itself. [Indeed,] globalization could represent the greatest challenge to national unity since the Civil War."

Title: The Complexities and Contradictionsof Globalization
Author: James N. Rosenau
Globalization, we are told, is what every business should be pursuing, and what every nation should welcome. But what, exactly, is it? James Rosenau offers a nuanced understanding of a process that is much more real, and transforming, than the language of the marketplace expresses.

Title: The Erosion of the State
Author: Susan Strange
"The long struggle for liberty and accountability gradually made at least some states accountable to the people, but globalization, by shifting power from states to firms, has allowed international bureaucracies to undermine that accountability. None of the new nonstate authorities are accountable; few are even transparent. There is a democratic deficit, not only in Europe, but in America, Japan--the entire globalized economy."

Title: Globalization at Bay
Author: William W. Keller and Louis W. Pauly
"Power. . .may indeed be shifting within different societies, but it is not obviously shifting outward into some supranational corporate ether. Markets, or more precisely, huge, sprawling commercial hierarchies, are not replacing states as the world's effective government."

Title: The Tyranny of the Financial Markets
Author: Barry Eichengreen
"Developing countries as a group have grown faster than the developed world in the period of global finance. . . And developing countries that have integrated into international financial markets. . .have grown faster than those that have not. . . But like a more powerful automobile, financial integration offers developing--country drivers additional risks as well as opportunities."

Title: Prosper or Perish? Development in the Age of Global Capital
Author: Blanca Heredia
"Globalization is not making the world less diverse and more equal. . . [True,] more and more people across the planet have become increasingly exposed to the amenities of the global marketplace, although mostly as permanent window--shoppers and silent spectators. The large majority of humankind, however, is rapidly being left outside and far behind."

Title: Indigenous Peoples and the Global Economy
Author: Douglas Watson
"If it is true that a society can be judged by how it treats its worst--off, then surely global society can be judged by its actions toward indigenous peoples. Countless peoples--many of them ancient and all unique--have been eclipsed by the encroachment of an insatiable world system. It could be said that the real loser in this clash of civilizations is humanity."

Title: Globalization and Marginalization:Debt and the International Underclass
Author: Thomas M. Callaghy
"A central structural dilemma for the global economy is the emergence of an international underclass of weak states and economies that may not be able to benefit easily or quickly from economic reform and democratization. It poses major difficulties for the functioning and evolution of the international political economy and for international peace and conflict well into the next century."